


I Want a Pet

by poisns



Series: Derry Shenanigans [3]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drabble, Fluff, Gen, Good Pennywise (IT), No Beta, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 18:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18857131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisns/pseuds/poisns
Summary: Why want a pet when you have a Pennywise?





	I Want a Pet

**Author's Note:**

> i keep writing things and then never posting them. did this one maybe a year and a bit ago? wanted to post when the fandom lit up a bit more. i'm pretty sure that this was also inspired by one of the drabble title lists from promt-bank on tumblr. enjoy!

When it snowed in Derry, it was welcomed with open arms. Typically, an inch of the stuff would settle for a day or two, and if the residents of the small town were lucky, they’d be able to see a couple more. The kids would gather in groups, sometimes alone, and round up as much snow as they could to make snowmen. The occasional snowball would be tossed, which always resulted in an extravagant snowball-off between different packs of kids. Once or twice, Richie was the one to initiate it, as well as being the one to finish it off. Typical Richie.

However, being able to go outside in the freezing, misty weather meant that it came with its downsides; like getting sick. Which was the _exact_ situation that Georgie had found himself in. Before waltzing outside wearing his coat with only a shirt on underneath as he had originally planned, his mother had hastily grabbed him by the hood and forced him back upstairs to equip many, _many_ more top layers. Her concern was understandable - he was only small, and he felt the cold a lot more than his parents, or even Bill. But, in his mind, it did mean that he’d be losing more time to play outside.

He found a grey turtleneck sweater that had fallen off of its hanger inside his closet and pulled it on. Along with the coat, it felt tight, but he just wanted to get outside. So, he called out to his mother that he was wearing a t-shirt, a sweater, a scarf, a hat, and his coat, as well as two pairs of socks on underneath his goloshes. He wasn’t wearing the items of clothing he listed, though, and Bill saw right through it. He stuttered out a feeble _‘Georgie, w-wait,’_ as his kid brother carefully made his way through the garage and out into the snow.

All was fun and games for fifteen minutes or so until Georgie had decided that he no longer needed his coat because it was ‘making his arms all stiff and weird’, so he shimmied it off and discarded it inside, just as he flopped down onto the white-covered ground to make a snow angel. Bill had sighed and told him that he’d get sick, but Georgie disagreed.

Until the next day when he woke up with a stuffed nose and a hot face.

“I t-told you, Georgie. I really did.” Bill said, sitting on the couch by the small peak in the blankets where Georgie’s feet were. The boy looked beyond sorry for himself, nose all red from rubbing it raw with tissues.

“Shut up, Billy.” He croaked. He didn’t need Bill being all…   _big brother-y._

“Hey, don’t get like that, Squish,” Richie called out from the kitchen, “you got Big Bill waiting on you like a damn butler ‘till your parents get home.” He returned to the living room with a bowl of sliced apples and placed it atop Georgie’s sweater-clad chest. Bill smirked.

“Nuh-now whose the butler?”

Richie shot an ice-cold glare towards Bill and flopped onto the armchair across from the brothers. “Shut your pie-hole, Denny.” The taller boy lolled his head back to rest it on the chair. “Where’s Stan, by the way?”

Bill shrugged. “Don’t know. I cuh-called his house phone twenty minutes ago. His d-dad picked up, said he’d left a few minutes before.”

“Well, let us hope he hasn’t fallen and died. That would suck ba--”

“Don’t fi-finish that sentence, Rich.”

Bill had turned on the television an hour before Richie rocked up (wearing _shorts,_ by the way) for the sole purpose of distracting Georgie from his _allegedly_ catastrophic sickness. There was a programme on, something along the lines of _Wild Kingdom,_ which Georgie had taken a strong liking to whilst swaddled amongst blankets and cushions double his size. He stared in awe at the images of the lion cubs pouncing around all over the show, and his bottom lip jutted out.

“Billy?” Georgie scratchily called out to his brother, sitting up just a little bit to get a clearer view before him.

“Georgie?”

“I want a pet.”

Bill’s eyes widened. “Oh? Wha-what kind of pet?”

Before Georgie could strain out an answer, the sound of the front door opening and closing rattled starkly throughout the house, and a voice called out, “Guys? Where are you?”

Richie’s eyes lit up, “Stanathen! You didn’t die!”

A pause.

“ _Oh_ , look what the cat dragged in.”

Stan came into view, visibly confused - and slightly offended - at Richie’s remark. “Huh? What the-”

Georgie turned around at the commotion to be faced with a very wrapped up Stan, and a soaking wet Pennywise looming behind him. “Penny!”

“Oh, Lord…” Stan muttered, not even bothering to face the intruder.

“Ugh, Crusty! Look at the state of you! Why are you so freakin’ wet?”

The clown frowned, curling his shoulders forwards. “I kept slippiNg… I haven’t ever beEn out in this weatHer before.” He admitted. Richie’s disgusted expression morphed into a shit-eating grin, and his cheeks soon puffed all the way out from containing an aggressive burst of laughter. The clown needn’t have used his fabricated legs to walk, but judging by the expression that was still plastered onto his face, the curiosity of the snow had gotten the best of him, which was hardly out of character.

Pennywise glowered directly at Richie. “Leave it, Richard,” Stan warned.

“Well, touching on what Georgie was gonna say before my baby returned,” Stan rolled his eyes, “I don’t think he needs a pet.” The youngest of them all pouted and huffed through his blocked nose.

“Why, Rich?” Bill questioned.

“He already has a Pennywise. Taking care of this fifty-foot tall demon baby proves a challenge like no other.”

“Don’t start on him, Richie. There’s steam coming out of his ears.” Stan deadpanned. He laid his coat over the radiator to dry and perched on the armrest of the sofa Geogie was laid on.

“Har-haR. Funny, fUnny, StanLey. I saw yoU fall to thE groUnd a cOupLe of timeSsssSs too!” He hissed, just as an irate snake would. His embarrassment was showing in his own way, but also as clear as day. Georgie silently compared him to some animal off of the show he was watching by looking back and forth from the television to Pennywise, but couldn’t quite name it off the top of his head.

“That’s no secret, Clown. I’m pretty sure everyone can see the wet patches on my butt.” Stan contorted to the side to get a better look at his soaked jeans, feeling entirely uncomfortable with wearing denim in the cold in the first place. They made for an incredibly frustrating item of clothing when wet, even cold. Neither did they conceal the large splodges of dark where he had toppled over onto the ice on more than one occasion when walking to Bill’s. “There’s no shame in falling on your a- _butt,_ sometimes. Right, Richie?” Stan shot a vicious side eye to his friend, prompting an agreement of some kind, only to quell the oncoming aggressive snarls that Pennywise frequently let slip whenever he was mildly angered.

_Sensitive,_ Richie always called him

Behind his back, obviously.

Or, as behind his back as one could get.

Richie shivered as the glare practically penetrated the side of his face. “Yeah, he’s right. What he said. Nothing wrong with slipping onto your ol’ probably-not buttocks."

Stan was as scary as the massive murder-clown. That was certainly confirmed.

“J-just don’t come and sit on the couch with your w-wet… outfit.”

Pennywise glowered, but not enough to send the older Denbrough boy into a fit of anxiety.

“Sure he can sit! He just needs to dry off first!” Georgie beamed, tucking himself in further than he already was. Pennywise mimicked the young boy’s expression, almost exactly, with the exception of having extensive front teeth that grazed his painted bottom lip. Georgie giggled.

Bill pursed his lips and nodded his head towards the stairs. “Since y-you have no problem just w-walking into my house, I’m sure you won’t mind getting a t-t-towel from the cupboard down the hall.

The clown locked his gloved fingers together and nodded.

“Of coUrse, Billy.

Plodding away, the bothersome sound of his boots squeaking against the hardwood floors, three out of seven of the Loser’s shared the most incredulous expressions ever worn on each of their faces.

“That was crazy! Y'all saw that, right?”

“Clearly we did, you look just as shocked as the next person,” Stan said.

“He was almost as submissive as Eddie’s mom when-

“ _Beep beep_ , Richie.”

“Well,” Tozier started, “since when does that… _dolt,_ know how to listen with those manufactured ears of his?” He pushed his glasses after they’d fallen halfway down the bridge of his nose during the mild rampage

“Maybe he’s just in a good-er mood today,” Georgie suggested, the use of _better_ lingering on the tip of his tongue, but he was far too tired to overthink adjectives. The older boys exchanged questionable looks. “Why you all looking like that? At each other?”

“No reason, Little. Your great big friend gets _too_ angry sometimes, yeah?” Richie said, partially softly for the sake of the seven-year-old, however the bite he possessed in the undertone of his words registered in the older two’s ears.

Georgie didn’t _really_ understand what Richie actually meant, but he nodded anyway.

“Good. Just don’t want you getting all upset with us, ‘s all.”

(He still clearly didn’t get it, but he silently appreciated their efforts to explain whatever it was they were trying to tell him.)

Heavy footsteps indicated that Pennywise had returned, and when he rounded the corner into the living room with an armful of towels, Georgie grinned and clapped his hands. “You found them!” The clown grinned right back at Georgie only, and let the expression fall completely when he looked back towards the other three boys.

“And nOw?”

 

\--

 

It had taken longer than wanted _or_ required to pat down the clown with the towels he had foraged for. Bill didn’t think that it was possible for something that could shift into anything or anyone it desired to stay so soaked; but he figured once you were wet, you were wet. That, and it made a hilarious show for Georgie who was forbidden by Richie to get up from his spot. His giggles and sighs of contentment reverberated throughout the entire house, and the three boys would be telling lies if they hadn’t found the noises lifted their spirits.

“I think you’re as dry as we can get you, Clown,” Stan said whilst dragging his green towel over Pennywise’s _colossal_ head, visibly getting a kick out of the way it jolted from side to side.

“Owh- StanleY, _stoP that,”_ Pennywise complained, growing more irate the longer Stan manhandled him for the sake of getting a laugh out of Georgie. Richie snorted and grabbed the used towels off of the floor, balling them up. He threw them through the arched doorway and into the hall, earning a side-eye from Bill.

“My apologies. You feel dry?”

Pennywise straightened out his clothes, stretching his arms to his sides. “As a bonE.”

Georgie had been vibrating with excitement whilst waiting for his friend to be dried off like a dog, continuously making sounds of impatience whilst the others battled against the clown. He held his arms out towards Pennywise as far as they could go, begging for the attention that he so deserved. He let out a surprised yelp when Pennywise swiftly grabbed Georgie under the arms, blanket still tucked around him, and lifted him up into the air. The clown enveloped both arms around Georgie’s back and squeezed, not so hard to cause the boy’s eyes to pop out of his skull, but enough to give him the comfort and security he desired. “Ahh, that’s nice, Penny. Thank you,” he laid his head onto the clown’s shoulder, getting a face full of ruffles, but still grinned and closed his eyes as he wrapped his own arms around Pennywise’s neck.

“Crusty would be a wonderful mother, don’t you think?” Richie chided, looking at Stan and Bill for a reaction. Stanley raised his eyebrows, not taking his eyes off of the TV.

“Sure, Rich.”

 

\--

 

Prompt list can be found [here.](https://prompt-bank.tumblr.com/post/152084082678/drabble-challenge)


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